Mexican soldiers carry out an anti-drugs operation in Monclova, Mexico; while Mexico's security forces come under scrutiny for human rights abuses, the government immigration agency has been exposed as rife with corruption. Photograph: Semar/EPA

"The fact that there are those who are corrupt, criminal or abuse of their public office does not make a state criminal or corrupt. We should not extrapolate the actions of individuals as those of the state … Mexico is not Arizona."

So remarked Mexico's sub-secretary of Latin America and the Caribbean, Ambassador Ruben Beltran Guerrero, on 5 April, following the release of report by the government of El Salvador accusing Mexican authorities of human rights violations against 250 El Salvadorian immigrants in 2010.

While Mexico is, indeed, unlike Arizona – where anti-immigrant laws are passed by politicians in an effort to appeal to certain political interest groups – it is very similar to countries like China, India and the Philippines, where poor law enforcement and oversight has led to the enrichment of government officials through human trafficking and complicity with organised crime. For Mexico's cartels human trafficking is a $15-20bn dollar industry second only to drug trafficking, and is especially rampant in Mexico, due to the country's function as a conduit for migrants travelling to the United States.

The public furore brought on by the recent scandals involving Mexico's immigration institute have led the federal government to join the chorus of complaints against the INM and make clear their efforts to clean up the country's dysfunctional immigration agency. This effort has included dramatic helicopter rides by government officials along Mexico's "migrant route", the purging of seven high-ranking INM officials (after three years of complaints in some cases), and a series of indignant-sounding speeches by cabinet members calling for the "modernisation" of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Mexican legislators from the country's main political parties have gone further and demanded inquiries into the immigration agency's management, as well as the congressional testimony of the current and former heads of the INM, which include Cecilia Romero Castillo, now secretary general of Mexican President Felipe Calderón's National Action party (PAN). The federal government's new line is striking in that it makes tacit recognition of the INM's systemic corruption, and contrasts sharply with the response of Ambassador Ruben Beltran Guerrero to the allegations made by El Salvador.

Still, full recognition of the immigration agency's problems is far from universal. The current head of the INM, Salvador Beltrán del Río, continues to deny that his agency has any endemic faults, while Ambassador Ruben Beltrán Guerrero insists that Mexico is not Arizona (apparently, it's worse), and that the recent scandals are not symptomatic of a larger institutional malady.

As the Mexican authorities slowly begin to understand the relationship between the corruption in the country and its battle with organised crime, Mexico's human rights record has only become direr. Demonstrating the extent of the government's role in abusing the rights of migrants, a report released Tuesday analysed the complaints by migrants in more detail and identified similar patterns of abuse by Mexico's federal police force, the country's refugee commission (Comar) and the special prosecutor's office on crimes against migrants.

What these recent events now make overwhelmingly clear is that although Mexico is not yet a failed state, many of its most important institutions have failed. Organised crime survives by exploiting sectors of the economy where the rule of law and the state is not present (even if that includes government institutions themselves). As a recently released independent Global Commission on Drug Policy shows, the current prohibition-based approach to battling the illegal drug trade has mostly led to massive collateral damage, while increasing global consumption and promoting the trade of more dangerous drugs. As Mexico enters its fifth year of militarised conflict against organised crime, it would serve the federal government well to recognise the mounting evidence of failure of its national security strategy.